I stared into the twin suns on Tatooine and used my hand to shield my eyes. Not due to some intense lighting effects, but rather to further immerse myself in the world and mimic the feel of being my childhood hero, Luke Skywalker. Had this been the end of my hands-on with Star Wars: Trials on Tatooine , had I only got to stand on Tatooine and watch the suns set, I would’ve walked away content.
But it wasn’t. And I walked away with goosebumps.
Soon, the Millennium Falcon (!) swooped overhead, hydraulics hissing and sand blasts gusting around me as it descended. I ducked, overestimating my height in the world against the landing gear on Han Solo’s iconic ship. Solo himself began barking orders at me, as two TIE Fighters came in hot and fried some of the Falcon’s circuitry. A panel opened, and I pulled a sci-fi mishmash of wires and components to the ground in front of me and began. Repairing. The. Millennium. Falcon.
R2-D2 soon appeared at my side, ready to bleep-bloop orders at the Falcon. Chewie managed to shoot down the swooping TIE fighters, but soon after an Imperial shuttle landed nearby. R2-D2 got my attention. He had a present for me.
A lightsaber. I’m about to swing an effing lightsaber on mother effing Tatooine. I immediately began a series of quick wrist moves, and whirred the humming blade around me like a super cool, super badass Clone Wars veteran. I imagine this is what I actually looked like:
Turns out my skillset is more Wii Sports than Obi Wan. The Stormtroopers all took fairly open positions and began lobbing some medium-speed E-11 rifle shots at me. Deflecting them was easy, but deflecting them with lethal purpose was not. After my slick wrist moves netted me nothing I began to gingerly tap at the shots to try to gauge how to control them. Several pathetic minutes later I realized tennis swinging is the mechanic that works best, and I defeated the Stormtroopers while also feeling like a winded loser.
But as soon as the HTC Vive came off I couldn’t stop smiling. The realization that I had managed to experience one of my childhood dreams, a Star Wars VR experience, erased any shame I had about my poor performance. My inner Success Kid was beaming.
Star Wars: Trials on Tatooine is far from a complete game. Lucasfilm’s ILMxLab has a lot of work to do before this title could satisfy fans lofty expectations. All told I spent probably ten minutes in the game, but it was enough to make me want much, much more. I played plenty of other VR titles at GDC 2016 that had longer demos, more developed mechanics and sharper graphics. But none of them were a dream come true. It’s not a long time ago, it’s not a galaxy far, far away. It’s here. It’s now.
